Silent Hill: Psychosis
by GluedToTheKeys
Summary: Agoraphobic Steve Dalloway finds himself descending into madness as he enters a dangerous new realm full of bloodthirsty monsters, puzzles, and things he will never forget, if he makes it out alive.
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 01  
Welcome**

_Steve Dalloway's head throbbed in a strong, pulsing motion that darkened his eyesight to a blur and overpowered his body, forcing down on him with an unbearable load of pressure. The images that had once been his apartment blended in his brain as a pulpy mass, swirling like a rotating slushie machine. The pain made screaming inevitable, but when this desperate wreck of a man opened his mouth to call out, only silence followed, his vocal cords shying from their responsibilities. He couldn't so much as squeak a noise as his breathing slowed and slowed with the pulsing in his skull and the muddy crimson that soaked his vision mercilessly. He stumbled over his own being, even with the simple shape of the hallway, slamming into the wall at his side once or twice. His eyes caught glimpses of carpet, then living room wall, and over again. His breath quickened as something unknown clogged his neck. It stuck thickly, like molasses, and filled his mouth from floor to uvula with the taste of metal. I'm going to die, he told himself, and there was not the slightest hint of doubt, or of hope, in his thoughts. I'm going to die. A piercing ring jolted his ears as he tripped over his own foot once more. Desperately, he reached out to feel the walls, to visualize them with his weak fingertips, reassuring himself that he was home, in his room, as he limped and staggered along, blundering like a sloppy drunk, but everything felt alien. It was as if he were in the same place, at the same time, but in some dark alternate universe. The excruciating sensation pumping through him didn't allow his thoughts to ponder it for more than rationed seconds at one time. After resisting it for so long, and the fight in him was dwindling, shrinking away, he finally found the voice to scream, scream for something he knew he'd never find or be gifted, but it wasn't exactly a scream; it was more of a strained gargle through the goop that still materialized in his throat. He fell to the floor, not collected enough to crash, not hollow enough to clunk, but dead enough to thud, knees impacting hard, slamming with a muffled pound against the softness of the carpet. The blackness, slowly, supernaturally, swallowed him up and shut his life down like a laptop._  
The restarting sensation repeated itself, returning momentarily with the awareness of reality as Steve awoke on his mattress, blankets bunched around his heated feet. He groaned, and somehow the fact that he could now release a sound startled him. When he rubbed at his forehead, the coat of cold sweat was evident against his skin. His hand dragged wavy hair up his head, and whatever sections had not been spared from wetness matted to the shape of his skull. A singular instance, he fetched his prescription bottle from the nightstand and popped the cap loose. It reached the point where, if he had moved another inch, a handful of pills would have spilled into his palm, but he resisted the lapse, convincing himself he didn't need it. Quietly, hands calming their vibrations, he returned the plastic cylinder to its spot and clicked the lid shut.  
Still weary, he stumbled to the bathroom, and the hallucinations of his dream followed, refusing to let go, yet he could only remember bits and pieces. The absence of memory didn't relieve him, though; it haunted him, a horrifying image in the back of his mind, unsettling emotions and clips that he couldn't quite fit into place. He remembered struggling, an intense sense of pain, and some sort of overwhelming darkness, but nothing else. Despite the fact that nightmares were as routine as sleep for him, they always managed to linger.  
Steve glanced up at the small bathroom mirror as he leaned against the sink, drowsiness still evident. He had to catch his slipping elbow and keep his eyes from drifting shut. Still disappointing as it was expected, he had to lean to see his face in the reflecting glass, because he had always been a bit too tall, even in adolescence. He sighed when he noticed he had fallen asleep in his clothes. His jeans, a couple sizes larger than they should have been, were only held on by the protrusions of his pelvis. With a quick sweep of the hand, he straightened the mess of dirty blonde that sat greasily atop his head. It matched the field of stubble running from cheek to cheek. Thin scars criss-crossed his forearms, going all the way back to his childhood freak-outs, in which he would claw at himself to get rid of the hallucinations. They were ugly, but familiar, something he had gotten used to, and they had grown so old the power to disgust him vanished from their existance. The bags under his dark brown eyes were becoming more and more noticeable due to his recent lack of sleep, but there was nothing he could do to change that. The nightmares were worse now, if that were possbile. The sight of himself shouted the word loser. Then again, it didn't exactly shout; it groaned. Apathy towards himself came as easy as it would towards others. There was no love in his relationship with his own reflection.  
Steve might have been dirty, but he wasn't stupid. He couldn't deny how estranged he had become from the outside world, and he knew his little mental world only brough him the secret feeling of unshared misery. But Agoraphobia atop social awkwardness atop medical problems kept him from even the simplest of conversation. None of this was his fault, of course, but if you asked, he would tell you that was fact in one greasy heartbeat.  
He captured a fistful of filthy motel water and slapped it against his face before turning the sink off and making his way to the living room. A twinge of dj vu hit him as his eyes watched the hallway, and removing it from his mind was a battle.  
From the yellowed kitchen fridge, he grabbed a water bottle and carried it over to the couch, where he collapsed without hesitation and dug in the cushions for the TV remote. He clicked the power on, but only sharp, bitter static responded.  
"Figures," he murmured to no one, a lazy slur.  
The radio wouldn't work either, and he knew that already. Shortly after sending the 19-inch into a black silence, he fell, and there was no better explanation than a fall, into peacefully uninterrupted sleep, a half-emptied water bottle resting on his chest. The two hours he napped were near-silent, haunted only by blankness. There were no nightmares, and there was no rush in the lull of his secluded Wednesday morning.  
The rap of insistent knocking eventually woke him, causing the heap that was Steve Dalloway to shoot up on the couch in a hurried jerk that tugged at his back muscles and sent the plastic container from stomach to the rectangular shadow beneath the coffee table.  
No time to fully revive himself, he bolted up and rushed to answer the sound. He hoped it was her.  
When he opened the door, he saw that it was. No, Steve wasn't some douchebag lovestruck by the girl next door. Marian was five, and she managed to brighten every aspect of his life, sometimes in tiny ways, and sometimes climactically. She even forced a smile to his face, and she was adorable enough to do so while holding hands with her stump of grandfather, the pissy old motel manager.  
"Mr. Dalloway, I stopped by to tell you-"  
"Hi, Steve!" Marian called out with a combination of infinite joy and careless disregard for the overseer that brought a pleased grin to Steve's face.  
He crouched to meet her level as well as he could, a difficult effort at six-foot-one, and greeted her brightly. Still, it was strenuous to overshadow how crappy every part of him was currently feeling. "Hey, doll."  
The elderly man coughed, a noise that hinted towards frustration at Steve's lack of attention. Taking note of this, he stood back to normal.  
"Steve, you haven't payed your rent."  
Of course, he damn well knew this, and he damn well knew the only thing keeping his ass from the cold embrace of the sidewalk was Marian's adoration of him.  
"I-I know, Mr. Baits," he tried to say, but stammered, and sighed a muted sigh when he realized that. "I've just been-"  
"I don't want to hear it, Steve," Baits cut him off, sternly, and raised a halting hand. "You have a week."  
And just like that, he left, without allowing him to get another word in. The door was slammed in his face, but Steve could still hear Marian's youthful giggles down the corrider. Softly, he let a lighthearted scoff escape his lips.  
When he returned to the couch, fumbling the water bottle along his feet for the purpose of pure amusement, the reception had come back, and it came like a shimmering light in the darkness.  
"Ye-he-hes!" he chuckled triumphantly, beginning his long search from channel to channel.

.~.

The following night offered peace, or at least an absence of memory if the nightmares had come. Steve didn't dream, didn't stir, didn't toss, didn't turn. He just slept, a sleep with which came steady breathing and the heavenly gift of silene, and he couldn't have been more thankful for the rare serenity. He awoke earlier than he usually had, around a quarter to nine, and for the first time in a while, he actually felt happy. Ignoring the fact that this feeling was, and still would be, uncommon was necessary. After musing the morning over, sitting on the edge of the bed with a hidden smile, he was convinced that he felt good enough to leave home.  
Even those words were earth-shattering. Leave. Home.  
That morning, he brushed his teeth (thoroughly, for once), tamed his hair, spritzed on some cologne in place of a desperately needed shower, and even hummed a Nirvana song to himself as he made himself presentable, as close to the line between clean and dirty as he could possibly be. To put it in layman's terms, he felt pretty damned great.  
A grey-green tee and dark jeans slipped on, he snatched his brown jacket from the back of the couch, backup pills already stored. He prayed, though, that he wouldn't freak out; he wanted his day to be a good one. Maybe things would finally be okay, he hoped as his apartment and the depression that came with it dwindled to nothing more than a particle behind him. He paced down the hall, feet two confident friends. He whistled.

.~.

The air of the park blew crisp, gentle gusts against Steve's face, tossing his hair ever so slightly. He shut his eyes and took a deep breath, took it all in with a smile, hands stuffed into his jacket pockets. For the briefest, faintest moment, the pill bottle brushed his fingers and made him jump. He removed his hands in less than a second, and told himself, _convinced_ himself, that he couldn't acknowledge that now.  
Today, the crowds of people passing by didn't bother him, the sharp laughter of children who tossed a frisbee in the distance didn't bother him, and the golden retriever barking away at cars didn't bother him. Steve smiled, and let himself feel at peace. These seconds were tranquil, undisturbed, and for once, he realized, he didn't loathe his own godforsaken life.  
A police car whipped past. It's sirens blared. To anybody else, anybody in the whole damn city, it would have only been a noise, but to Steve, it was a stirring hell. He didn't know why; perhaps it was just the slightest sting in the back of his memory, but it set him off like a box of fireworks. His breathing turned hectic, stop-and-go, and his heart pumped much too fast for his body, for any human body.  
_Not now,_ he pleaded, mentally, as the cool pricks of sweat formed on his forehead, _Just not now._  
In mere moments, his heaving escalated, so loud now that it turned heads, heads that were reluctant to help rather than avoid him. The better word, now, would not have been breath, but hyperventilation: Noisy, heavy, frequently rhythmic, and enough to turn a panic attack into a scene for the whole park to observe. Suddenly, Steve understood what was happening to him in its entirety. He was panicking, and shit, he was panicking hard. In the short time before he would inevitably pass out, he fumbled a shaking hand in his jacket for his medication, grabbing at clumps of leather before he finally touched the surface of the bottle. But there was no time to pull the container from its place. Steve fell to his knees, still scavenging for breaths with the weakest fight, and the most miniscule amount of air that remained in his lungs. What came next was expected by very few on the sidewalk that afternoon. Steve Dalloway flopped onto the cement, hands cold, chest still, eyes clenched, and body paralyzed. All that defined him were the soft, persevering breaths that managed to find their way in and out again, without awareness to guide them. They, too, would leave him, in time.

.~.

Hours later, however many had passed in blackness, Steve came to on the asphalt. He was lying in the same position, in the same spot, and it didn't take him so much as a minute to realize not a soul had tried to help him. He sucked in his first conscious breath. It shook. The air now held a murky, somewhat deadly consistency, its cool whisp long gone, as it would soon fade from Steve's memory. From the beginning of a second to its end, his head pulsed with a thick heartbeat, and a an unintelligable whisper brushed by his ear. He quickly forgot it.  
After sitting up, the next instinctive action was locating his pills. He searched his jacket with one hand and blew a relieved sigh at the touch of plastic. He stood to his feet; they hurt.  
"Ow, damn," he whispered as he touched the side of his head, responding to another rapid twitch of pain. The feeling subsited after a short, agonizing moment. "I got to get home," he informed himself, adding it on in a mumble, when he noticed the darkness around him. How long had it been? he wondered. He couldn't shake the stir in the deepest pits of his stomach. The word that came to mind was wrong.  
Briefly, he studied his surroundings, but he didn't see trees or cars or people, or anything he had expected to see, just misty clouds and heavy auburn.  
"What the hell?" he asked, softly, knowing he would have to answer it himself as he paced along the street, or at least what looked to be the street; the lack of sights and sounds made it difficult to tell what or where anything was, presently.  
After what felt like a good two miles of darkness and blind wandering, a large percentage of the fog had lifted, disappeared into the atmosphere. The sudden cold pummeled Steve like a ton of bricks. He shivered. His fingers clung to his jacket as if life depended on it. Again, he heard the whispers, and although it was still snappy and uninterpretable, it was longer this time. His breath sucked itself in, rather forced its whole back up through Steve's windpipe, its own entity.  
Don't panic. _Everything is fine. Don't panic._  
But there was no more time for mental comfort when a low groan defined by sudden, uneven spikes switched Steve's attentions. The sound was alien. It was evil.  
Steve's head clicked down towards the road to look at... something. It slunk along the ground on footless legs, taped together and rendered useless; they were splattered in blood. Its eyes were gaping pits of black, and when its mouth opened, as well as it could, strands of skin held it together like gum on the bottom of a shoe.  
"Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit!" he blurted, causing him to stumble back and fall. Nothing else mattered but distancing himself. He continued to scoot backwards with his feet, even when knocked down. Shock wasn't an emotion, it was him, and everything that shaped him in the moment.  
It reached a hand, bony and pink with bloodied skin, towards him. Claws attempted to grab him, but only graced his shirt.  
Steve tumbled flat on his back, his elbows cracking hard on the cement. He didn't respond to the pain. It was outweighed by a mix of adrenaline and fear.  
The creature leapt for him, close enough to hover above his cold-blooded body, hands trapping him at the sides. Its throat threatened him with a high-pitched trill.  
Steve couldn't breathe. He couldn't make a move. He could only freeze. He could only stare with wide eyes.  
When its razor-sharp incisors dove in for the kill, Steve mustered his strength again. He kicked the monster off and away from him, giving a grunt out of effort. It let out a screech to make ears bleed as it fell on its side and skidded across asphalt. When it looked back, even though it had no eyes, Steve felt as if it could see right through him and beyond. The thought chilled his pounding chest.  
"Oh, no you don't!" Steve shouted, and shoved his work boot into the thing's scrawny back.  
It screamed, a scream so far from human, and died. Maybe it wasn't the first time, either.  
Steve needed a minute to catch his breath, or he would inevitable freak out again. The reality that he hadn't panicked yet was so insignificant when compared to his situation. Steve was confused. He was worried. He was scared. The latter was most prominent.  
Somehow he still had the will left to continue down the street, and shortly later, his eyes caught sight of a billboard. Only four words were painted on that billboard. They were weathered. They were grey. They were a mystery.  
But none of that kept them from stopping his heart.  
WELCOME TO SILENT HILL 


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 02  
Four**

He didn't understand what was happening. He couldn't.  
At first, he thought this must have been nothing more than a dream, that it was the only possibility, but waking, he discovered, was not an option, as sweet as it sounded at the moment. He then considered insanity, that maybe all of this was just his own descent into madness. That didn't add up, though. His head was level, and the danger here was real. At least, it felt real. Then, he wondered, maybe someone else was doing this to him, had set it all up to study his every move. But, Steve knew, believing something like that would make him insane.  
There was, thankfully, plenty of time to consider this without interruption, even though that didn't stop his eyes from darting left and right, waiting for something eerie, something disturbing, something traumatizing.  
Quickly, Steve halted his steps, in response to a noise further down the road. Continuing was not an attractive option, so he did the first thing he could think of and ducked in a building to his left. When he turned away from the door, feet still moving in baby steps, he noticed he had entered an abandoned hotel.  
The haunting presence of the lobby was highlighted by dim, rocking lights. The walls were a dark golden brown, illuminated in a coat of dusty orange from a lamp sitting on the front desk. The whole place gave him the unshakeable creeps, but then again, everything in this strange new realm found a way to rattle his spine.  
Steve's feet thudded muted soles against the tile floor, and Steve picked up the pace once more. His fingers slid along the surface of the wooden counter, leaving them caked in a dusty powder.  
Something snapped his eye, peripherally. A glint, lasting no more than a second, touching no more than the corners of his vision. Carefully, he rounded the check-out counter for a better look, and saw that, out of a good four-hundred room keys, only one lay in its slot: The key to Room 307.  
Steve shuddered, a stirring rush of needles pricking his body from his legs up to his neck.  
_Weird,_ he thought, a nervous wreck, but they weren't the only words on his mind, simply the most collected ones, _That's my room number back at the motel..._  
When he began to consider his third scenario again, he shook his head and cleared the thoughts of it as much as he could. He reached out for the key. When he realized how violently his hand vibrated, he stopped to stare at it, and recognized the feeling as resistance. Pushing through it, he snatched the key from its spot, so quickly that his body could not fit in a protest. A noisy jingle echoed through the lobby when his hand could not stop it's shivering.  
"Get yourself together," he breathed, pleaded, warned, and advised all at once. "Get yourself together."  
Steve wanted to search for supplies for more than a minute, but when whimpering sobs, somewhere close, hit his ears, he rushed himself towards the elevator with persistent chills in his spine and the notion that the sobber might actually reach out and touch him if he didn't move fast enough. The fact that he was the only person in the lobby didn't detract from the aversion, only offered another handful of unsettling possibilities. He stepped his foot halfway in, but before it hit the floor, he realized the lights were off.  
"Shit," he hissed. "Looks like I'm taking the stairs."  
He considered, knew, rather, that when he spoke, something else, something bigger than him, heard it as well.

.~.

Steve panted, so fiercely that the air stung him, as he trekked up the zig-zag stairwell at a run. Athlete was never a word to describe Steve Dalloway. In fact, the only thing keeping him going was the screeching yell somewhere close behind. Another one of those crawling creatures had sniffed him out and was now chasing him without letup. His heart was drumming his chest, without a doubt trying to break free of his skin, break free of this place, and find its way home, leaving Steve to fend for himself as a hollow shell. It was a fitting, thumping theme musing to their game of chase-and-run of which the outcome was oh so vital.  
A large gap in the floor hindered his escape, and Steve would have fallen down to his death if it weren't for the heels of his boots.  
"Shit!" he groaned loudly. The past twenty minutes had turned it into his favorite word.  
The courage to jump would not reveal itself. His breath was held, and his hands were plywood stiff, but neither was noticed or acknowledged. This time, when the scream resounded up the stairwell, it sounded significantly nearer to him. He knew there were only two options: Jump or become dinner for a monster.  
If Steve had so much as thought about his next move, he wouldn't have been able to act on it. He didn't position himself. He didn't get a running start. He just jumped.  
To his extreme relief, Steve reached the next detatched fligh, just barely, with his feet halfway on and struggling to balance themselves. He felt a thump in his chest when he realized the line between life and death had been thin, and very literal. He turned his head over his shoulder and saw the creature clawing at the air, attempting to nab him with a distinct lack of intelligence and depth perception.  
Steve left it behind, but his mind did not. No more stairs taunted him as he reached the top, only a large, man-sized whole in the wall that lead to what must have been the second floor or so. The thrill of his previous encounter didn't exactly permit him to keep count. Hesitantly, he stepped through, taking a three-sixty glance around himself, the way you do in the middle of the night when you can't get to sleep. The coast looked clear, and hopefully looks wouldn't deceive. For reason he couldn't quite understand, the silence did not relieve him. It made him shiver with fear. Something was waiting, and the slightest move could be so much more. It could be an alert.  
Following the beat of Steve's throbbing temple, the walls pulsed, something like veins jutting through them. The sensation was gone so rapidly, though, that it was hardly remembered.  
At a steady speed, Steve kept on, body shaking, eyes cris-crossing the hallway.  
_I'm scared. I'm so... fucking scared. This doesn't make sense. This can't be real. I need to wake up, but... but I can't. God, I'm so scared._  
A strong chill hit him out of nowhere, and the sudden temperature changed forced his hands into the warm pocket of his jacket. Goosebumps appeared, dotting themselves across his skin, sweat leaking from his forehead, as he continued down the hallway.

.~.

Finally Steve arrived at the door of Room 307. He slowly, steadily slipped the keys out of his jeans. The closer he inched the key to the doorknob, the harder his hands shook, and the louder the voices in his brain chanted the room's number. The rattling of his grip made it difficult to unlock the door, as much as it taunted and pulled him towards its insides. Like the motions of a drunk attempting to unlock his car, Steve slammed the key against the handle, around the edges of the slot, aim hectic. The next second, instantly, the shaking ceased entirely, and the chanting vanished with a "30-", fading and dissolving into the air. Steve stood still, hesitating a moment more. Then he turned the key.  
He felt something he couldn't describe as he stepped through the doorway. It was out-of-place. Uncomfortable. Anxious. Distant.  
Aside from a blood-stained bed and a scratched dresser, there was only one sight of interest in the room. An etching, carved into the opposite wall. Steve, hesitant as he might have been, stepped closer to study the picture. It was a sketchy drawing of four stick figures: A man with a big red "X" through him, a woman, a small girl, and a final person that had been hidden with scribbles. FOUR PAWNS, the text above it read, ONE GAME. The ink looked like... blood? ONE WAY OUT was carved below the four. Those words wrenched at Steve's stomach.  
What? That was all he wanted to know. What did it mean? Why was it there, and why was one crossed out? Who had put it there? Where was he? And most importantly, how could he get out? How could he escape this? How could he _wake up?_


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 03  
Memory**

Steve sat down on the dirty mattress, rust-colored splatter-stains long faded beneath him. Lengthily, he sighed.  
"I don't understand," he muttered, arms resting on his legs, and didn't care that receiving an answer was impossible; he needed one. "I don't know what's happening to me. Who are you?"  
But this time, as he yelled to himself, a response did come: The whisper, and he picked up a word this time: "Out". But it wasn't enough for him. It wasn't satisfying. It didn't even deter him this time.  
A loud running noise made him, finally, pull his palms from his face. Steve jumped at the sound, and searched the room for any kind of weapon, anything remotely dangerous. But no luck. He inhaled a deep, shaky breath that chattered his teeth. He knew, for a fact, that he had never been more afraid in his entire life. There was not a single doubt about that.  
The sound of a child's laugh followed the trampling feet, traveling through the empty hallway, and floating in the darkness, and drifting like a rock across water. Steve, not stopping to think, left the room to follow it.  
He heard it again, closer. He walked further. The cycle repeated itself twice before the boy finally dashed into his sight. The two now stood eye-to-eye, one gazing up, one gazing down, one mesmerized, the other frightened.  
Something struck so familiar about the pair of young brown eyes looking up at him. Steve couldn't quite put his finger on it, but it still froze him over, all the way down to his core.  
"Steve!" a voice interrupted the silent stare-down, calling from another room.  
Steve's head darted up, straight ahead again, and unbelievably, he almost answered the caller. But before so much as a syllable could leave his mouth, the kid wheeled around and chased the name, giggling until the sound lost itself down the dark passage, then disappeared.  
"Oh my God..."  
It was clear now. It was insane, but he understood.  
_That was me,_ his thoughts nearly stuttered themselves, _That doesn't make sense._  
Hands cold and stiff, Steve felt for his pill bottle. He knew he was on the edge of a panic attack. The container rattled in his palm, and he was too caught up to notice the color in his skin had disappeared, turning him pale white. The cap dropped, and Steve strained to contain his screams as he watched the majority of the tablets skitter across the floor.  
Instead of releasing a voice, Steve's jaw dropped. His blood was ice. The pills that should have rolled across the hardwood were different. They had changed somehow.  
"It's candy..." he whispered, expression molded in shock like a plaster mask. "It's fucking candy..."  
He stared and stared again, but the rainbow-colored pellets refused to alter themselves. They lay scattered on the floor, and Steve swore he could hear them mock him. He picked a few up and popped one in his mouth, an act of last-resort desperation.  
Misery pulled and tugged at the back of his throat, and he nearly broke down and cried right then and there. He slammed the handful against the wall, and it fell, in powdery chunks, to the floor beneath his feet.  
"Strawberry..."

.~.

Steve's ears buzzed as the walls turned to skin, and the floor to a goopy pool of blood. It wasn't just vision, either; the fleshy sides of the hall felt just like soft, bloodied skin to the touch, and he kept hearing voices: His mother's, his father's, his own, and it was driving him mad. All signs pointed to a spike of his perception disorder, especially without his pills, but something told Steve it was much more complicated than that. It was Silent Hill. It was something aware of what it was doing.  
_Hell,_ he decided, _That's where I am. Hell._  
"Pathetic, disgrace, loser," the voices of multiple children taunted in his ears, voices he hadn't heard for at least fifteen years, voices he didn't remember remembering. But he must have, because this realm had managed to extract it and use it against him.  
As the world turned, and the walls thumped, Steve Dalloway knew his reality was dying, dying a painful death.  
"Hey," another supernatural child snapped from behind and shoved him to the ground.  
Steve fell flat on his face, into the thick mirage of blood. It coated his face and filled his mouth. He scrambled to sit up, sputtering crimson liquid and exhaling a long, labored heave. It was beyond horrible and beyond any other word in the dictionary that could possibly fit. He actually tasted the metallic flavor of blood, felt it trickling down his features. But in another instant, it was all gone, leaving him on the floor with a clean face.  
Steve couldn't take it anymore. He couldn't take the laughing, the crying, all of the gut-churning sounds echoing through empty corriders, all of the blood-curdling voices screaming from nowhere. He squeezed a death grip on his pill bottle, because it comforted him in the most insignificant way. He slammed his eyes shut and crushed it tighter and tighter until it broke into three shards of orange plastic. Weakly, his hand released, and the first teardrop of many plopped to the floor.  
"What's happening to me?" he questioned, inconsolably longing for an answer, to the silence. "What do you want?"  
The coat on his lips tasted salty, and his eyes stung red when he blinked. He was breaking, and he would soon be broken. The end of his rope was closer than it had ever been. Softly, he sheltered his head with his arms and lowered his neck as if shielding himself in a tornado drill. Since the very first sign of danger, he hadn't been able to stop shaking. He just wanted it to _go away._  
Steve's voice faltered, cracking as he whimpered to himself, "Why?"  
"Hey, man, you okay?" 


	4. Chapter 4

**Silent Hill: Psychosis  
Chapter 04: Amy**

All Steve Dalloway could see through his cloudy eyes were two blue orbs staring back at him. A hand reached out and helped him up, and after wiping his face, he saw a short girl with long brown hair standing in front of him. He was so detached from reality, and she noticed, that he wasn't even surprised by her presence.  
"Hey," she introduced herself with a friendly smile. "I'm Amy, Amy Henderson."  
Steve didn't answer.  
"Umm..."  
"Steve," he mumbled softly. He actually wanted to talk to her, he just... couldn't. He was acting strange, distant.  
"Steve...?" she pushed him to tell her his last name.  
"... Yeah."  
"Right then." She decided to forget about it, because he didn't seem to understand. She fumbled around for something, and finally pulled out a handgun, placing it gently in his palms.  
"Here, take this," she offered. "This place can get to you. _Don't let it._"  
"Thanks," he replied as he examined it. Hopefully he remembered how to use it.  
"So where are you headed?" Amy asked while watching him.  
"Huh?"  
"Where are you going? How are you... trying to escape this... nightmarish hellhole... universe, dimension-whatever it is?"  
He almost laughed. "No idea. Which way's the right way?"  
"Hell if I know. I've just been shooting."  
The two took to walking down the dusty hall in deadly silence. For just a moment, Steve thought about the bloody walls again and gagged. Amy didn't notice, and he was glad.  
"I'm surprised you trust me," she finally spoke up, "what with all the crazy shit going on around here. You've seen it, too, I imagine, from the way you were curled up back there."  
"There's something about you," he answered briefly. He didn't really want to say it, but there was something in her eyes that let him trust her.  
"O...kay?" Amy looked over with a confused expression.  
"I can just tell."  
"Right." She turned her head back to look in front of her.  
Just as she did, the floor started... cracking. She held out a hand to stop Steve, who wasn't paying enough attention, from continuing. The wood tore left and right, floorboards were ripping themselves up. It wasn't very shocking compared to most of what both of them had already seen- but that didn't mean they couldn't run.  
They didn't make it far. Not even halfway down the hall, Amy fell into the gaping hole under her and, after attempting to hang on, fell down what used to be floors of rooms to the lobby.  
Steve spun around at the sound of her screaming, and that one second he stopped was enough for him to go crashing below as well.  
But the lobby wasn't there for long.  
The wallls were dissolving, blowing away in the wind in insignificant pieces of what used to be the hotel. An eerie orangle light flooded in the room. Instead of the street outside, the ashes revealed dirty metal walls, and the sound of air blowing through a fan in the ceiling. Valves, grates, pipes- It looked like a nightmare's water plant.  
A loud, reverberating noise like a deep, bellowing moan blew through the room so loudly it caused the two to cover their ears. It only happened once, before the ground began to shake wildly.  
A hand the size of a truck grasped onto the floor from below, from a dark black cloud that had just appeared as well. It looked broken, twisted, bony. Pieces of skin were hanging down like ribbons from blood and muscle.  
Then another hand from the left. Both of them pushed down to lift a body through, but before the two could see it, a thick, bloody fog blew out. Amy covered her nose to cover up the smell of rot, while Steve was caughing violently.  
It didn't take long to fade to reveal something horrible. The giant hands had lifted the upper half of what appeared to be the body of a corpse, also dead and bloody. Flaps of red flesh hung out of its ribcage, almost like an overflowing suitcase. The abomination before them, while almost as tall as the building, looked to be nothing more than flesh and bones- and a hell of a lot of blood. It became more grotesquely thin as it breathed.  
As its face came diving toward Steve, he took a shaky and rushed step back, and almost fell. Its sockets held no eyes, and it apparently couldn't see very well. Its nose dented in to look like a car crash, and rather than a mouth, its lower jaw hung from thin strands of skin like bubblegum on a shoe. It had a nasty row of harelipped teeth on top, but none below- only the revolting mass of flesh and blood hanging loosely from its mouth, swinging back and forth slightly, still, from the sudden movement. The creature took in a deep breath, and let it out in an ear-piercing scream ten times worse than the worst sound they had ever heard. It was like nails on a cat made of chalkboard. Its breath smelled like a decaying graveyard full of the most disgusting, rotting corpses in the world that had been dunked in sulfur for good measure. Chunks of mouth-skin flew and were almost ripped off at the pressure.  
Steve somehow found time to gulp. "Shit," he squeaked out with the voice he no longer had.  
It lifted its right hand and swung it forward to grab him, but he ducked in the nick of time, cutting it so close that the hanging skin of its fingers actually brushed the top of his head.  
They both started running in circles around it, trying their best to dodge its bony grasp. Chunks of the oversized cadaver were flying everywhere, splattering on the walls and falling in piles on the floor. Neither knew what to do besides play the same game of cat-and-mouse with it, and there was no time to stop and think, no time to discuss it. Besides, they had ended up on opposite ends of the damned thing.  
"Steve!" Amy finally called out, harsh pants clear in her breath.  
"Yeah?"  
It was extremely difficult for the two to converse with the monster swinging at them, so it was imporant to keep everything short and make sure it was loud enough to be heard the first time.  
"What do we do?"  
"I thought you were supposed to know that!"  
"Why?"  
"You've been here longer!"  
"How-"  
"I can tell!"  
The three danced that deadly dance of dodges and swings until finally Amy was caught. It lifted her in its hand and tightened its grip to squash her like a grape.  
Steve had to act fast, and the first thing that came to mind was the gun. He pulled it out and just started shooting at its face without thinking- there wasn't time for that.  
Sure enough, it worked. The hand released to drop Amy to the floor. Steve rushed over to catch her, and she smiled a relieved smile at him before he put her down.  
It let out the scream again, but its bottom jaw ripped off and fell to the floor, leaving that scream a bubbling gargle of blood that spattered around the room.  
"That's it then," he said in a labored breath. "Shoot."  
The creature was angrier now, its challenging little game had turned into pain. Its hands found a new way to stop them, by slamming down on the floor to watch them topple over, vulnerable. What _was_ running became trying to stand in a deadly Moonbounce. The thing was still gargle-screaming, practically throwing a fit like a toddler.  
But it still didn't stop the bullets. Soon it lost a left arm and more than half of its face. It continued to pound and pound the two with its remaining fist.  
Steve was fumbling to reload, dropping a bullet or two, only leaving one. He only had one shot. He took a chance, aimed, and fired. There was nothing else to do.  
And just like that it was down. The bullet flew between its ribs and punctured its heart, which squirted blood like a sprinkler. The blood-mist drained everything it had left. It fell, was almost sucked, down the hole from which it had come. The only thing keeping it on the ledge was its shaking fingers. The mangled half of its face shreiked out. It was determined to hang on for dear life.  
Steve walked to the edge and raised his boot. "Let me give you a _hand_!" he exclaimed before kicking its fallen arm at its face, which caused it to fall down into the endless darkness with one last bloodied scream.  
In the whole macabre scene, Amy actually laughed.  
"What?" he asked and turned to look at her with his puzzled face.  
"That was kind of funny."  
He smiled halfheartedly and left the side of the hole. He wasn't ready to risk falling again.  
"Oh, and, I know it's late, but thanks."  
"For what?"  
"For catching me," she said with a smile.  
"Oh, it-" he stopped himself. "Well, I'd say it was nothing, but you're quite hard to catch for a skinny girl."  
She giggled for a brief moment, then nodded her head at something. "Steve, look. Door."  
"Awesome."  
He twisted the orange valve on the door and it popped open. Steve led inside (It was common courtesy, even in another dimention) and Amy followed, making sure to shut the door behind her. Whatever was in there couldn't be as bad as what they had left behind.  
"Holy shit..." she heard Steve mutter in the darkness. He was staring at something, but all Amy could see was a red light.  
There was only one thing in the small pitch-black room: The same carved picture he had seen earlier. And he knew what it meant now.  
"You're the girl!" he spun around and yelled in what sounded like a "Eureka!" moment.  
"... Come again?"  
He stepped out of the way and tapped his finger on the etching almost madly. He was having an insane breakthrough.  
"I'm the guy. And you're the girl. Then there's the kid and the man."  
"Okay...?" she asked rather than said. "Then where are _they_?"  
"See," he continued, pointing at the picture all the while, "that's why we have the little 'X's. We're already _here._"  
She nodded, trying to pretend she understood, but she was actually somewhat fearing for his sanity.  
"But... you were here before I saw this the first time..." he pondered.  
"But then we met."  
"Exactly!" he snapped his fingers at her. "Then we have to find... little girl, then... guy slightly shorter than me."  
Amy buried her face in her palm for a moment, then looked back up at him (Steve wasn't looking at her, rather at the wall) with her hand out in a questioning gesture.  
"Steve, you sound like a mad professor."  
He sighed for a moment. "Sorry if I... freaked you out, I'm just..." he paused to think, "starting to understand this whole crazy thing."  
"All right. Just don't go insane on me."  
"Sure thing."  
Amy took a step towards him, finally feeling comfortable again, to watch him. He put his hand flat on the wall, studying it, trying to figure out how to get through. The cramped square felt like a carnival house of mirrors. He tried kicking it- didn't work. He tried pushing it- didn't work. Steve tried most everything he could think of to get through, but still, the wall would not budge.  
"Come _on_!" he shouted in anger and tugged his hand down, which, to his surprise, sent the piece of stone down into the floor to reveal a pathway.  
"Well then," was all he said, ignoring his previous rage. He glanced back at Amy. "Shall we?"  
She stepped in as well, then turned and lifted the wall back up to its rightful place.  
"Why do you insist on closing everything behind us?" Steve asked as he watched her clap her hands together to get rid of the dust.  
"Whatever's back there, it can't be any better than what's ahead of us."  
He said nothing, just nodded his head, then continued walking. Although they were both still traveling in darkness, the faint red light from the wall radiated into the newly-revealed hallway, illuminating the path just enough for them to see their way through it.  
Steve felt a hand grab his.  
"Please tell me that's you," he whispered as his heart skipped a terrified beat. He didn't want some creature touching him, much less being stuck in a narrow hallway with him.  
"I..." Amy stuttered. "I don't like... the dark."  
Steve chuckled and kept walking. He actually felt relieved. "That's all right, I don't like social contact... or cats."  
"Cats?" she stifled a laugh.  
"They gross me out, they're always creeping around in alleys and licking themselves in... places."  
"At least you have a reason," she assured and finally laughed.  
He didn't say anything, nor did she. They just kept walking in the seemingly infinite corridor that had, by now, gone pitch-black.  
Amy shut her eyes (She wasn't sure why, in the darkness, there was really no difference) and rested her head on his back. She was tired, in all of this commotion, all of this insanity, she was actually tired.  
Steve didn't seem to mind, just kept on. After forever and a day, the tunnel finally ended- only to reveal a hole, with walls like air vents, so deep the bottom couldn't be seen with a _telescope_.  
Steve did nothing but sigh.  
"Shit." 


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 05  
Apparitions**

The pair stared down the gaping pit before them a minute more, then Steve turned around.  
"I'll climb down," he offered, placing a hand to Amy's shoulder, "and see if I can find a way to get _you_ down."  
"Steve," she warned as he found a foothold.  
"Yeah?"  
"Be careful."  
He nodded, a promise, and began his cautious descent. Clearing the nauseating thoughts from his brain, he climbed down, foot, hand, foot, hand. Then he considered something.  
_What if there's no bottom? What if this is some crazy evil shit and I'm going to climb forever and eventually have to let go?_  
Steve shook his head. He needed to focus, think positively. If he didn't, he was going to fall. For just a sudden second, he remembered something his mother had told him: _"Thoughts can change the world; use them to help yourself."_ It seemed like a load of hippie bullcrap at the time, but now, as he made his way carefully down to another realm of madness, it began to make some sense.  
"Steve Dalloway," he said to himself, making a "tsk" sound, "did you ever think, in your life, you'd be here? That you'd be in another dimension full of sick shit, climbing down a hole, _voluntarily_, into more of it?"  
He let out a long sigh and stopped. After staring at the grated wall for a good, long time, he started up (down, rather) again.  
"This sucks," was the last thing that came out of his mouth before he journeyed the rest of the distance in silence.  
Finally, to Steve's extreme relief, he reached the bottom. Landing on his feet, he heard something that stopped him in his tracks. The whisper.  
"... Out... One..."  
Steve still had no idea what it meant, but he was going to decipher it, because he loved the sound of the word "Out". He dug in his jacket pocket and found most of the label from his pills (which were now, of course, candy on the floor of a dissolved hotel) and a pen from his jeans that he always carried when he left home, if he ever did. He scribbled the two words down. It still meant nothing, but maybe keeping track of it would help. He shoved the small shred deep in his pocket as not to lose it.  
The bottom of the pit carried an acidic-smelling fog so thick it seemed alive. The only light came from a place far down the tunnel before him. It almost looked like sunlight, but he couldn't be so lucky; it was always dark, here, in Silent Hill, wherever the hell that was. Whatever the hell it was.  
Steve started up again, walking to God-knows-where, and found he was less and less afraid of traveling in this place as time passed, even when the crazy crap it spat out was enough to make him wet his pants. Moving forward, he understood, was key to survival.  
The tunnel held the acid stench even stronger, a scent like an amusement park fog machine.  
A giggling voice, that of a child's, called Steve from further on, and although it only said his name, taunted, it made him want to wheel around and run, climb back up the hole, and tell Amy they were going to have to stay there for the rest of their lives. He swallowed all of it. He was thankful that it didn't happen again.  
Watching the floor as he moved, he almost missed what his head was about to bump into: A dead end.  
"No," he whispered, defeated, then gritted his teeth. "That can't happen!"  
No matter how hard he threw punches against the wall, it couldn't change the death sentence that stood before him. His hand rested, defeated, on the stalemate.  
"Don't shout," a stern voice warned from behind him. "You know how your mother feels about shouting."  
Not a word in the dictionary, in existence, no word that ever would exist, could have described how strongly Steve Dalloway didn't want to turn around. He found the will, somewhere in him, shivering.  
"D-Dad?"  
_No, of course it's not Dad, dumbass. It's this place screwing with me again._  
"I suppose all you can do is shout when you're a socially awkward, greasy psycho who never amount to anything," his decoy dad assumed in the same cheery voice with the same perfectly happy smile. It was a prosthetic joy, as if he were plastic, or clay. The expression did not, could not, change, no matter what words escaped.  
"Wh-What?" was all Steve's shriveling voice could ask, but it meant so many things.  
"You heard me, Steven." Still with the smug asshole grin. "You're a loser."  
Steve couldn't believe what he was hearing, no matter how fake it might have been. It wasn't something his father would ever say to him; his parents, both of them, had always been the best a kid could have. And now his own dad stood before him, talking down trash with that chilling, synthetic smile, and hands clasped behind his back. Even if this was far-fetched, the appearance was exact to the last detail: Short brown hair, bright green eyes, chopped-up goatee, and a stomach too round for his body. He was Alexander Dalloway, in all his entirety. Except for his words, of course.  
"Shut up, Dad!"  
_Why am I screaming? I can't let this get to me, or I'll be dead soon._  
Dad only smiled wider.  
"I knew I was never good enough for you, and I said so, but you told me 'No, Steve, you _aren't_ good enough, you're better than that! You don't have to be anything people want you to! You just have to be who you want to be! That was all a load of pep talk bullshit, wasn't it? But I believed it, because it was the only fucking thing that made me feel better! You're an ignorant asshole, Dad, just like everyone else!"  
_Did I just say that to my own father?_  
Somehow, in some improbable way, Alex managed to smile wider.  
Steve screamed again, drawing back his fist and punching the duplicate straight-on in the face.  
Finally, it frowned. "You're a bad kid, Steve." Another smile, this time triumphant. "You're grounded."  
With those words, he faded. His face disintegrated, and his entire form turned to sand and fell. The mirage of a father in front of him was now nothing more than a pile of dirt on the concrete floor.  
"Fuck you!" Steve yelled at the inanimate mound and stomped on it in nothing more than rage.  
He knew his _real_ parents were both far away, in their old house in Oregon; he _knew_ he knew that. But the lethal combination of madness and anger kept his foot kicking. It was just so realistic, part of him believed it was actually his dad. Or at least, something his dad had meant to say. He stopped himself, eventually, soft pants in his breath.  
_No. No, Dad wouldn't say that to me. This place is just messing with my mind._  
Steve buried his face in his hands and released a long exhale. For the first time in this encounter, he noticed the tears welling in his eyes. He had actually been _crying?_  
One final time, because it was necessary, he reminded, promised himself that none of this was real. It gave him the strength to move again.  
He was expecting to face the wall again, but when he turned around, it was gone, just vanished into thin air. Compared to what he had seen so far, it was nothing. He blinked his eyes to rid of the remaining tears and stepped forward.  
Once more, he peeked over his shoulder, to the pile that had once been his father. He sighed. Something in him wanted to run back to him and pick him all up and stuff him in his jacket pockets, but that would only confirm the fact that he was hopelessly mad. He couldn't let this place hit home. Not to mention seeing his father, or at least his father's face, brought up some homesickness.  
Of course, he was already homesick. He wanted to go back to his apartment and never leave again. That was all he wanted.  
He forced his thoughts to cease and sighed again, continuing. Whatever awaited him at the end of this tunnel, whatever bloodthirsty monster or dj vu-conjuring mirage, it wasn't going to be pretty. That went without question. This whole town (was it a town?) was a nightmare for a nightmare.  
Steve scoffed with half a heart, half a voice, half a life. "Fuck Silent Hill," he mumbled. "Fuck it all."

.~.

At the end of the tunnel, only a ladder awaited Steve, leading up to wherevard it might take him. A circular reflection of sunlight, or at least light, reflected on the cement below.  
Steve swallowed a lump, took a step, threw a hand up, a foot, and climbed. It didn't matter where he was going anymore, he just had to keep going, whether he wanted to or not, and he clearly didn't.  
He was blinded, momentarily, by an intense white light when he reached the top of the ladder. He wiped his eyes to restore vision after it faded. He then wished he hadn't.  
His hometown: Canby, Oregon.  
_Holy hell._  
"I-I can't be here. I can't be home," he stammered under his breath, half out of shock and half because, if anything was here, he didn't want to be heard. "That doesn't make sense."  
But nothing changed. It was still there before him, crystal-clear, exactly as he remembered it: Green, sunny (which was surprising here), friendly-looking, and smelling of freshwater. If this wasn't Canby, it sure as hell looked like it.  
Of course that was one-hundred percent impossible. But this place seemed to know everything, as if it had ripped open his brain, dumped all of his thoughts and memories into a blender, poured it out, shaped it into a town, and named it Silent Hill.  
The most jarring thought, pounding his heart like a congo drum, was that he knew where it wanted him to go: Home.  
He didn't travel very far before he found the address, but maybe that was because this wasn't real. With a sting of paramnesia that twisted his stomach into tight knots, he stood before the house he hadn't seen in nearly a decade. It struck him so hard he didn't take any notice to his hands shaking in his coat pockets. They moved so harshly it sent a shockwave up the length of his arm and to his chest. Briefly, a high-pitched ring echoed in his head, and he felt similar to when he had tried to open the hotel room door. But that was all lost now, somewhere in the dust, and now he was here.  
The voices whispered again, but he wasn't focused enough to understand the words, to write them down, or even to hear them as he stared down his childhood home.  
"Here goes nothing," he gulped, the most fitting clich, and made his way up to the door, hesitant.  
Hand unsteady, perhaps even smarter than him at the moment, he turned the knob and the door opened to let him in, something that surprised him until he remembered that he wasn't in Oregon: He was in Silent Hill. The door creaked, and even though it had always done so, it detered him now, in the silence.  
"He-Hello?" he called instinctively while shutting the door behind him. Even his voice, like his body, trembled. "Anybody home?"  
_Stupid question here, Steve. "Anybody home?" Really?_  
He shook his head, slightly, wishing the Jiminy Cricket in his conscious wasn't suck an asshole. It seemed all he could do in this place was beat himself up, in more ways than one.  
There were a lot of new things that came with the Silent Hill package; a lot of things that could drive a person mad.  
_Maybe this is all my fucking perception disorder, he considered again, Maybe it's making me see this shit. Maybe this is all in my head._  
But everything felt so real, and somewhere deep inside of him, he knew it was, more than he could handle.  
As expected, nobody answered. He regretted asking in the first place. So, because the house was empty, or at least sounded that way, he decided to explore.  
The first place that came to mind was his old room, a room he hadn't occupied since age nineteen. But what he found didn't exactly represent that.  
It wasn't his teenage dump full of 90's rock posters, books about hot chicks with guns, and dorky plastic action figures stuffed underneath the bed.  
Instead, the room looked like it had when he was a toddler. Toys were strewn across the carpet, and his bed was still a cheap red racecar. He couldn't believe what he was seeing as his eyes widened into two vast wastelands.  
_Remember, Steve: Silent Hill._  
A voice, soft and cheery, interrupted his thoughts behind, and he recognized it from the first syllable.  
"Welcome home, Steven." 


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 06  
Where The Heart Is**

"Mom?" Steve asked as he turned, although he knew it wasn't really her; it couldn't be.  
"Well, of course, silly!" the woman about his height (he had inherited it from her) giggled, smiling warmly and throwing her arms around him. Even though it had been years, and this wasn't even real, a hug was still an insufferable chokehold.  
Steve gulped. He had to say it. "You're not my mother."  
She laughed, uneasy, trying to shake the comment off of her, but hurt still bled through. "What are you talking about, Stevey?"  
_"Stevey"? Fuck you, lady. Just... fuck you._  
Steve pressed his eyelids together and balled his fists so tightly his nails imprinted the skin of his palms. He didn't think it would be so hard to say these things to someone who wasn't even real. She seemed so kind, as if there were no hate in her heart. And to top it all off, she looked just like his mother.  
"You're... not... Mom," he repeat, as assertively as he could, even though the words held themselves back.  
When he opened his eyes again, he was surprised to see her smiling, still, at her son.  
"If you really don't believe me, I've got it right here..." she assured, digging for her ID in one of the pockets of her long Boho skirt.  
Even her clothing highlighted important aspects of her personality: She was, as she had always been, one of those cheery hippie types, and she needed every last bit of space on her body to carry her things around.  
After a bit, she retrieved her identification, still trying to prove to her own child that she was who she claimed to be.  
"Aha!" she exclaimed, brightly, and handed the card over. "Here we are."

NAME: KITTIE MAY LOVE-DALLOWAY  
HEIGHT: 5'09"  
WEIGHT: 148 LBS  
HAIR: BLONDE  
EYES: BROWN  
DATE OF BIRTH: 1-22-1962  
PICTURE TAKEN: 2-11-1980

Steve examined it thoroughly, hoping to point out some error, but everything was up to code, even the old dirt smudge in the corner from when Steve had pretended to be a policeman in the backyard as a child, and dropped it in a large pile of mud. That was something only he and his mother could have known.  
_And Silent Hill,_ he thought angrily. He felt as if he had been mind-raped, like somebody was stealing all of his memories for his own. It wasn't fair.  
"See?" she asked in a soothing voice, as if speaking to a baby. "It's me, Steve. And I missed you, sweetie. Why don't we talk for a bit? I'll brew up some tea if you like."  
Steve couldn't think up one damn thing to say, so he just told her that was okay. But it wasn't; he knew it wasn't.  
Kittie smiled to replace her concerned face. "Lovely."

.~.

Steve couldn't believe he was sitting in the kitchen with a charming middle-aged woman who was supposedly his mother, and with all of the facts before him, it was hard to deny that as he waited to sit down to tea talk about the last eight years of each others' lives. It was vital to remind himself periodically that this wasn't real. She wasn't his mother. Unless Silent Hill had let him go home...  
No. As sweet as that sounded, it just didn't make sense, and if he so much as _began_ to believe it, he could officially be written off as psycho.  
Soon his blisfully delighted mother returned to the table and placed two mugs down on the knit cloth that covered the wood.  
Steve remembered his habit of poking his nails into the tablecloth holes, and when he realized he was doing it _now_, for just a passive minute, he stopped.  
He studied the coffee cup. It read CRATER LAKE NATIONAL PARK, OREGON, 1998. Steve hadn't seen that snowy wasteland since he was fifteen, and all he remembered was keeping his hands in his pockets the entire time and grumbling about how easily he could be anywhere else.  
His mother's glass had #1 MOM painted across it, and was plastered with poorly-drawn daisies and hearts. Steve had made it for her when he was seven. He could read the words perfectly, because they were turned to face him instead of her, subliminally, as if she were still trying to convince him that she really was his mother.  
_She still uses that thing? She must be losing it. My mother is insane... Is she Mom?. God, I hope she isn't._  
"So, how have you been, dear?" she asked so suddenly it made Steve jump, rattling the cup of coffee against the table, but she didn't notice.  
"Umm..." The question was simple, but to Steve, it was asking too much.  
_What is there to say? If she's really Mom, I can't just tell her "Oh, yeah, it's been great living in a shitty apartment for the past seven years, using the same check you gave me when I moved to get by day to day eating fast food and cans of soup for dinner. I have no job, shower once a month, and sometimes have panic attacks when I go out to renew my prescription of pills that keep me slightly on my rocker, panic attacks that sometimes take me to insane places where my father calls me a loser then melts into a pile of sand after I punch him."_  
"Good."  
That was the first lie of many.  
"Where do you work?" She covered her mouth as if she had just said something awful. "I mean... if you work. If you don't, that's fine, I just thought-"  
"Oh, I work at the..." he thought of the first thing that came to mind, "animal shelter."  
Kittie tilted her head and brought back the smile that made Steve want to accept that this was all really happening.  
"That's wonderful!" she congratulated. "I know how much you like animals... You don't have to take care of any cats, do you?"  
_She remembers everything... because I do. I don't care if she's my mom or not, it's fucking creepy._  
"No... they have a girl for that... Her name's..." he impulsively said, "Amy."  
_Oh, fuck, why did I say Amy? It could've been Mary or Michelle or Katy or anything but Amy!_  
"Ooh, is she pretty?"  
It was a typically shallow Mom question. She doesn't want to know if she's interesting or a good person, just if she's "pretty". It didn't matter though, _his_ Amy wasn't real, just one big lie in the web of lies he used to keep his fake mother proud, part of a whole fucking faux universe that got stuck in there. And that was a good thing; it meant he could say anything he wanted.  
"I guess," he responded, forcing an uncomfortable chuckle.  
"Do you like her?" she questioned as she leaned over the table, as if she were about to recieve some piece of juicy gossip.  
"... Kind of."  
"Aww, that's adorable." She reached out a hand to ruffle his hair, and the gesture actually scared him, because he didn't want some crazy illusion touching him. "My little Steven's growing up."  
He laughed, a really bad, obviously nervous "heh" kind of laugh.  
"Does she like you?"  
Steve almost ran right out the door at the quesion, then reminded himself that everything else was fake, so why not lie again?  
"I think so, I mean, maybe."  
"Which means...?"  
"We talk a lot... about work and stuff, but I feel like..." Lie, lie, lie... "she doesn't really know about me, like, about the things people don't want to know. I think I might be lying to her."  
_Damn, Steve, you're a pretty believable liar on the spot,_ he told himself, but he was so far in by now that he didn't even realize these weren't lies anymore.  
"Honey, I'm sure she'll accept you for who you are."  
Such a mom answer, and to a twenty-seven year old man, no less. Things never really change in a mother-son relationship, even if you're smack in the middle of hell.  
"Thanks, Mom," he said after a brief, pondering silence. "I guess I should just tell her."  
_My God, why do I feel like that advice actually helped me?_  
His mother held out a halting hand. "Oh, but don't tell her everything at once," she advised. "Take it slow."  
Steve scoffed. "I guess there's a lot, isn't there?"  
Kittie rested her hand on his. "That's not such a bad thing, you're just..." she strained for a motivational word, and he could tell, "very interesting."  
_At least she didn't say "special"._  
"Aren't you going to drink anything? It's cold out there, you must have been outside for so long, you poor dear." She stood and took a step towards him, that shouldn't have been interpreted as intimidating, but it felt that way. "In fact, let me take your jacket."  
He couldn't say no to her, because things were going well, and fuck, it might have driven her into an insane rampage. In this crazy alternate-universe-whatever-it-was, he had to play everything just right.  
She took the leather jacket and hung it on the hat rack by the door. It almost fell, rocking side to side, then stayed. She scanned it over, then turned to Steve over her shoulder.  
He scrambled to take a hasty sip of tea to please her, hoping she would think he had been drinking it the entire time. The liquid in the cup tasted bitter, almost metallic. It was pretty bad, but he didn't bother saying anything, or even looking down.  
"Would you like me to wash it for you?" his mother asked, still beside the door.  
"What?" He hadn't been paying enough attention, which was key here.  
"Would you like me to wash your jacket for you? It won't take too long."  
"Oh..." he thought about it for a moment, and decided it was best to agree with her. "Yes."  
"It's nothing bad, just that it could use a wash," she explained as she headed toward the laundry room, Steve's coat in her hands.  
His heart skipped a beat as he reached in his pocket, relieved that he had left the paper in his jeans. He, reassured, almost let a sigh escape, but only exhaled through his nose so that his mother couldn't hear it. He didn't want to be hit with another damned question. It would have been understandable, as they hadn't seen each other in eight years, but these two had _never_ seen each other, because she couldn't really be Kittie Dalloway. The fact that Steve was still on the fence about it concerned him; was he actually considering any of this?  
"You must have gone through so much trouble to come here," she continued from the other room, almost shouting over the slamming of the washing machine. "I really appreciate it, hon."  
He faked a laugh, even smiled until he realized she wasn't looking. But maybe she still knew, maybe it was best that he keep a happy face.  
"No problem, Mom."  
As she returned, leaving the sound of a running washer behind her, Steve took another sip from the mug, pretending it hadn't only been his second. He just couldn't handle the taste. That was one of the only things off with her. His mother, as he remembered, was a skilled cook, at least better than this, who wouldn't have made anything so unpleasant.  
Then again, being alone without a child left in the home can really change a family. Some people go on successfully, others... go insane. And some, like Kittie, just lose touch.  
"Where's Dad?" Steve asked, then held his breath when he remembered what he had done to his father not so long ago.  
"Don't know," she answered as if she had just realized that she, in fact, didn't know either. "He hasn't been home for a while."  
Steve gulped and struggled to keep his face from turning red. What was he going to say?  
_He's dead, Mother, because I wailed on him and he turned into a lump of dirt._  
Hopefully Steve could be on his way before she found out her husband wouldn't be coming home, ever.  
Kittie took a seat at the table once again, still smiling like a madman pretending to be happy. Surprisingly, Steve thought his mother had always smiled like that. Maybe this place was actually fucking up his memories too.  
Steve finally studied what was in his coffee mug, and choked down a gag.  
_Yeah, she's not Mom. Mom doesn't put blood in her coffee._  
He definitely wasn't going to drink any more of it, whether it meant pleasing his mom or not.  
The two conversed about more of Steve's lie of a life for quite some time more, before his mother stood to move his jacket to the dryer.  
"Oh, no!" she moaned from the laundry room.  
Steve followed her and stared down into the washer. To his disgust, there was no jacket, not even shredded remains of brown leather. That would have been heaven compared to the reality of it.  
The washer was a soup of blood, guts, and flesh. Pink intestines and other organs hung over the sides and the agitator in the middle. The crimson mix almost reached the top. A head floated to the surface with a pop, eyes cut out and mouth stuffed with a washcloth.  
Steve looked over to his mother, trying to hide the fear he felt, but that was an impossible challenge. It was like she didn't see what he did, just a destroyed leather jacket.  
"I-It's okay, I..." he managed with a squeaky voice, and had to cough to finish, "don't really need it."  
"I'm so sorry, Steve..."  
"It's fine, Mom," he lied, possibly the most untrue lie of the whole day, "really."  
"If you say so, love, but I'm still sorry."  
Steve needed to leave, and soon. The smell of rotten death now wafted through the entire house, and it was making him physically sick to his stomach.  
"I don't feel so good," he groaned, and even talking hurt him. "Be right back."  
He stumbled into the bathroom, his head spinning. He felt like he had back in his apartment the other night... in that dream...  
In a heave, he threw himself over the toilet and grabbed it. He was actually going to vomit, and he knew it. He couldn't handle the smell, much less the thought that he had just consumed _human blood_ and his jacket was now a pile of human remains. It was just too fucking much.  
So he threw up. That was all he _could_ do.  
After coughing, flushing the toilet, and washing his mouth clean thoroughly, he opened the door to return to the sick version of a mother this universe had presented him with.  
But she wasn't there, and for some reason, he knew he needed to find her.  
Looking to the floor, he noticed bloody footprints tracked across the house and to the backyard. He retraced them, but didn't find her out back. They led even further away from the house, and he knew where she had gone with her damn bloody feet: The graveyard.  
Why his parents had moved in so close to the cemetary, Steve would never know, but it scared the shit out of him in his younger years, knowing so many corpses were so close. He used to have nightmares (big surprise) in which they would rise like zombies and creep into his room. No matter how distant in time, the thought made him shudder.  
The tracks led him past the house, and past the next one, to confirm his fears.  
"Zion Memorial Park," he mumbled aloud as he read the sign. He didn't even like the name of it, even though it was normally quite a cleanly-looking place.  
But everything was different now, since he had opened the bathroom door. Things were back to their usual foggy darkness, which meant peace, no matter how artificial, was gone and replaced with unbelievable bullshit. Shockingly, Steve found he wanted that back.  
The red feet pressed him on even deeper into the graveyard, all the way to the back, where a heavy black mist floated.  
"Mom?" he finally called, quieter than it should have been. He found he was feeling sick again.  
Just after he did, and shielded his face from the fog with a hand, he saw her, bare feet and blood almost to her knees, standing in front of a tombstone, deathly still, almost like a blood-stained porcelain doll.  
"Mom," he said again, dreading the sight of whatever she might have turned into.  
He was right. When she turned one-eighty to face him, she stared at him with no eyeballs, just bloody indents. Her clothes had been mangled somehow. She smiled that comforting smile again, but it just didn't have the same effect without a complete _face_.  
Steve read the name on the headstone through the fog and gasped, an almost silent breath.

ALEXANDER DALLOWAY  
1959-2010

"I killed him, Steve," she giggled madly. "I actually killed him. You know why?"  
At first, Steve didn't move, but shook an uneasy head when he saw she was waiting for a response. _Could_ she even see him? He wasn't sure, but in either case, it couldn't hurt.  
"Because he said you probably never amounted to anythng after yo uleft and that he wished he'd raised you better. I think you're perfect, Steve. Nobody talks bad about my baby!"  
Steve took a clumsy step back at the voice that had, in the flash of a second, replaced his mother's. It sounded deep, raspy, evil. It sounded like the devil himself.  
"I love you, Steve." She moved in closer, her motions now sudden, short bursts of movement similar to most of the creatures in Silent Hill. She was part of this now.  
Steve wanted to run, but then she would catch him, and he would die.  
"You're my little baby," she continued, touching his cheek. She smelled like a corpse, but then again, they _were_ in a graveyard. "A-And if anybody ever hurts you again... I'll have to kill them."  
He gulped, unsure of what to say, so he just blurted something generic. "I-I love you too... Mom."  
_No, not Mom. Something much, much worse._  
After hugging him, loose and shaking, Kittie gazed up at Steve with her hollow eyes. A drop of blood fell from the socket to her bare foot, becoming an insignificant drop among the rest, like a teardrop in the ocean.  
He wanted to shoot her, scream at her, tell her that, no matter what she believed, she wasn't his mother. But he was too afraid to. He could only stand there and let her bloody embrace stain his once-clean shirt.  
"Mom, he was right. I lied," he finally spoke up, his voice held back with fear. He knew he had to end this. "I'm a loser, I have no life. I don't even have a job. It's all a big lie I told you because I didn't want you to be disappointed in me."  
"O-Oh, no..." She took a few steps back, then, to his surprise, giggled. "You're funny, Steve."  
He almost couldn't respond to that, because it made him feel guilty.  
"It's true, Mom."  
"B-But that means... Alex was right..." She gasped and covered her mouth in horror. Steve could even see her eyeholes widen in regret. "No, I shouldn't have said that..."  
Kittie knelt to the ground and reached a hand into the dirt above her husband's body. She dug deep, deeper than her arm could have possibly stretched had she not been so inhuman. Soon, she thrusted a knife up out of the soil, still ripe with blood. It left her fingernails caked in a deep brown that blended with the red stains.  
"Now I have to die too."  
She raised the blade to her neck, and Steve felt the urge to stop her, whether it was real or not, and it wasn't.  
Before she slit her throat, she said one thing. "I love you, Steven. You're my angel."  
_Fuck, she hasn't said that to me since I was a baby,_ Steve thought in horror as he watched her body fall with a thud.  
He knew, positively, that none of it was actually happening, but it felt so real. It felt as if someone had reached a hand in his chest, twisted his heart, and tugged it out through his skin. He cried again.  
He couldn't believe he was crying, but sure enough, tears were streaming down his face, which he had buried in his hands to avoid the sight. He hated what was happening to him so much that he couldn't find a word to explain it. He just wanted out.  
As if in response to his thoughts, he heard the whispers again. "... Out... One... Must..."  
"What?" he asked, unsure of who could even hear it. "What am I supposed to do?"  
Steve didn't want to write anything down at the moment. He considered it, then let the thought pass as he continued to cry into his hands.  
"Fuck this place..." 


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 07  
Dreamsleep**

Amy sighed. She hoped Steve was okay. It had been well-over... how long _had_ it been? Minutes, hours? She could never tell in this place.  
She leaned against the wall and hugged herself, because she needed one, and she was alone. A sudden chill hit her and she rubbed her arms. Funny, she didn't remember it being cold. Maybe it was just a mental thing, because of the isolation. Maybe she needed Steve. Having someone, anyone, to share this craziness with made her feel safe, and she had happened upon Steve... and now he was gone.  
_He's kind of cute. I mean, he seems a little dirty, but he's pretty heroic in a bad situation. And he has such pretty eyes..._  
Amy shook her head violently. "What the fuck?" she asked herself so quickly it sounded like one long word.  
There wasn't any denying it: Whether she felt that way or not, it was comforting having someone to protect her, not to put it in such demeaning terms. It wasn't that, just because she was a girl, she couldn't protect herself, she just couldn't handle all of this alone, and Steve was a good guy, and he was there for her...  
Amy let out a long, miserable sigh, feeling tired again. She blinked her eyes a few times, against all resolve, and slid down the wall, arms still cupped around her stomach. Before she knew it, she was fast asleep...

_"Amy, wake up," a voice spoke to her in the sleepy darkness.  
With a short groan, she forced both eyes open only to realize she still couldn't see. She rubbed her face to rid of the bluriness, and after she did, a gasp escaped her lips.  
"S-Steve!"  
But it wasn't Steve, at least, not any more. His eyes were a solid black color and he sported a gut-wrenching grin on his face. What was his shirt was now torn to grey shreds and his jeans were wet with... blood?  
"I told you I'd come back for you," he said reassuringly, but it sounded evil as she watched his face.  
"Wh... Wha-"  
"Oh, it's nothing," he laughed, passively. "Just a scratch."  
"Just a scratch?" she yelled at him, scuttling to stand. She finally got on her feet without falling out of panic, although she slid down the wall a good couple of times. "Fuck that, you're... you're not even alive!"  
He frowned exaggeratedly, maybe he had to, because his blank eyes couldn't express any emotion.  
"Now, Amy, why would you say something awful like that?"  
"But-"  
"It's not funny, Amy," he said sternly, like he was lecturing her, and his eyebrows lowered insultedly.  
"I-I'm sorry," she stuttered and grabbed his hand. "You're not mad, are you?"  
Just like that, she wasn't speaking for herself anymore. Something else had taken over. The words had come out, sure enough, but Amy wasn't the one who had moved her lips to speak them, hadn't even registered them with her brain. They just escaped, and she hadn't said them. Who had?  
"Of course not," he answered sweetly and wrapped his arms around her. His skin was ice-cold. He wasn't human.  
"You know I love you, right?"  
What the hell is happening to me? she thought furiously. I'm not saying any of this!  
She almost felt offended that someone was talking through her, as if she were nothing more than a puppet with a body that could be passed from one voice to the next, and making her say such crazy things. Were they crazy...?  
"Duh," he laughed that horrid laugh again, backing up to grin at her, still connected by a hand. "I know everything about you, Amy."  
She giggled, no matter how much she didn't want to. "Of course," she laughed and waved her hand in an 'oopsie, me' gesture. "I forgot. You know everything about everybody who comes here."  
He grinned. It seemed, to Amy, that Silent Hill had actually enveloped him, become him. It was a nauseating thought that ate away at her insides.  
"There's just one thing I need you to do for me, Amy." Steve, what used to be Steve, put a hand to her shoulder.  
"What's that?" she asked dependently, as if to a master. Of course, she wasn't talking.  
"Wake up."_

Amy shot up, gasping for dear life. Apparently, she had been crying in her sleep, because she could feel the cold sting of tears under her eyes.  
_It wasn't real, Amy..._ she told herself. _It was all a dream._  
"Wake up, please wake up!" she heard a voice cry and glanced ahead to see a girl no older than five sitting on the floor in front of her. Her face was buried in a pair of tiny hands, and she was bawling so loud she didn't hear Amy panting with the shock of what had been no more than a terrible nightmare.  
Amy, reluctantly, put a hand to the girl's shoulder, unsure of whether she was really a child or just an illusion created by whatever had created the rest of this place.  
She looked up with red, watering eyes.  
"What's wrong?" Amy questioned softly. She didn't understand what was worth crying over to the little girl, why she had needed her to wake up so badly... Well, besides the fact that she was a _toddler stuck_ in some evil realm full of mad shit.  
"You-You-" the child sniffled. "You wouldn't wake up, and I thought you were never going to wake up and-"  
"Why did you want me to wake up?" Amy still didn't understand; she didn't even know this girl.  
"So you could help me," she slowed her hysterical crying in order to form a complete sentence without sounding like a baby.  
Those five words were a response that left Amy with a guilty twist in her chest.  
"I can help you," she assured, trying to keep some distance until she knew the girl was a real kid in real danger.  
Amy took her hand and helped her to her feet. She looked up to her with thankful eyes, eyes that told Amy she was different than the apparitions this town created: She _felt._  
"What's your name?" she asked, but the child didn't want to answer, just sniffled while shuffling her feet and watching her shoes move back and forth.  
"I'm Amy," she told her as comfort.  
She mumbled something, by Amy couldn't hear it. She knelt down and lifted her head so that they could meet eye-to-eye.  
"Huh?" Amy asked.  
"Marian," she finally spoke. "I'm Marian."  
"Well, Marian, I'm just waiting for my friend to get back and we can find a way out of here. I think you'll like him."  
"A-And he's going to save us?" she asked desperately, and it snapped Amy's heart in two.  
"Y... Yes," she answered, though it might have been a lie. She knew how to handle a child and that was to lie, especially if you both might be dead within the hour.  
_Maybe Steve is going to save us both... Maybe this won't be a lie._  
She couldn't tell herself an answer, because she wasn't even sure if he'd come back.  
No, she assured herself with a head shake to forget everything about that thought, He said he'd come back, and he will, because he-  
Because he what, she didn't know. She couldn't complete that sentence. What reason did Steve have to come back? Amy hadn't been vital to him so far, so why risk his neck to help her?  
_Because he's a good guy, that's why, and he's honest. He keeps his promises._  
Amy, of course, couldn't really know those things as fact, only being with him for a short time, however long they'd both been trapped here, but she believed them without a doubt. She believed they were genuine things about him. They were true.  
She glanced down at Marian, who was now hugging her leg with one hand, fingers of the other in her mouth.  
Amy couldn't really judge it. They all had their own way of coping. Steve cursed all the time (hopefully he wouldn't around the kid) and cried more than he knew she'd seen, Amy told herself things even she didn't believe to comfort herself, and Marian... Marian put her fingers in her mouth.  
"He's going to save us," she told the girl as she stroked her hair, her hand shaking slightly. Her eyes were locked on the wall across from her, because she needed to say these words to herself more than to Marian. "He's going to save us both." 


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 08  
Like Toy Soldiers**

Steve wiped his eyes a final time and sniffled. He had been crying for a while now, and he knew he had to return to Amy. He glanced at his mother's crimson-splattered body once more before turning to leave. He followed the bloody footprints in reverse all the way back to the house.  
The living room still smelled like death, and the scent made Steve want to wretch again, but after one gag, he managed to keep it down.  
He tugged at the handle of the front door, but no matter how much force he applied, it just wouldn't budge. He found that the windows wouldn't open, either, and the back door he had entered through was now locked shut. He tried slamming a lamp into the glass, and it wouldn't break either.  
For a few moments, Steve felt defeated, felt like this place had finally trapped him. He plopped himself down at the kitchen table where he had talked to his faux mother a matter of minutes ago.  
_Fuck, what am I going to do? What's Amy going to do when I don't come back? God, she's going to think I don't care about her. I can't let her get hurt, I promised her, I fucking promised her..._  
Suddenly, in a spark of hope, he realized where Silent Hill wanted him to go. But when he opened the door to his room, nothing, not even the trials preceding it, could have prepared Steve for the madness he saw.  
The toys were still there, with one big difference... literally. They were giants, and the room was suddenly large enough to compensate them.  
Toy soldiers taller than a hundred Steves marched across the room with pointed spears, plastic army men were shooting green limbs from each other, and Hot Wheels cars crashed into one another and caught on fire.  
"Oh my..." Steve whimpered. "Shit."  
He didn't have the words to say. He didn't even believe the sight before him could be real, illusion or not. It was like something out of a horror movie, a bad horror movie.  
One of the army men turned to look at him as he noticed his presence, and aimed his plastic machine gun. The rest of the battalion followed, and soon Steve had countless toy weapons circling him, and he knew one thing for sure: In this place, they were going to work.  
_The gun,_ Steve remembered, shaking in fear, _Amy gave me a gun._  
He held the pistol out and hoped for the best. After one shot, they were all going to unload on him, so it was strategical suicide, but it was all he had.  
Only a click came out.  
_Fuck, I forgot, there's no ammo._  
One of the plastic green men scoffed at him, probably the leader, as he was standing at the tip of the circle, directly in front of Steve.  
"If I didn't die fighting an oversized corpse with anger management issues, and I didn't die climbing down an endless pit to my mother who slit her own throat," Steve laughed and pointed a finger, "then I am not going to die at the tiny little green hands of a bunch of plastic army men!"  
With that, Steve took off running, all the way to something he hoped would work, bullets flying past. For an army, toys or not, they were pretty crappy shots.  
Steve got a foothold on the side of what used to be a toy firetruck and opened the door, which to his advantage, actually worked. He sat down and turned the key in the ignition. When the truck came to life with a roar of its engine, it was an indescribably sweet sound. Steve grinned as he slammed the gas pedal all the way down to the floor. He hadn't actually driven a car since he lived with his parents, because he didn't have a use, or the money, for one anymore. He hardly ever left his damn apartment, and when he did, he walked. Being behind the wheel for the first time in a good ten years, even if it wasn't a real one, felt good. It pumped adrenaline through him.  
And it felt damn good running over those fucking plastic army men, even with a fake firetruck. The hollow toys caved in on themselves and cracked, just as the normal ones would, except they were the size of people, real people. But Steve hadn't seen a lot of those here... just monsters.  
After he had taken care of the last of them in what must have been a rampage of power, because he obviously didn't need to take out every single one, he crashed through the wall of his room. When he made it out, the house was its normal size again, the truck the size of a real firetruck. He revved the engine to crash over the railing of the stairs and through the front door, all the way back down that ladder, through the tunnel to the pit, and away from this alternative to Canby, Oregon.

.~.

After returning to the bottom of the hole, he climbed up the white ladder and used the controls to lift himself all the way to the top, a beautiful alternative to climbing. Surprisingly, it reached all the way up.  
He hopped off at the top and grinned an overly heroic, almost cocky, grin.  
Amy immediately rushed to hug him, happy to see he still had a face, for the most part.  
_Oh, look, it's Amy from the animal shelter, who takes care of the cats because they freak me out, and just might be interested in me, but doesn't know I'm a total psychopath. But she'll accept me for who I am if I just tell her everything._  
"Steve, you actually came back!" she exclaimed with a tight hold that reminded Steve of his "mother"... what was left of her.  
"Why wouldn't I?" he asked, slightly shocked, and pulled her back to look her in the eye.  
"I... I just thought... you didn't care-"  
He put a soft finger to her lips to hush her, and her eyes raised to meet him again.  
"I promised you," he told her as if it were enough.  
Amy smiled and leaned forward to peek behind him. A thoroughly confused face replaced hers. "That looks like a firetruck ladder."  
Steve chuckled. "I've been busy," was all he said. It was definitely an understatement.  
His eyes went blank, and his jaw dropped, when he looked over Amy's shoulder.  
"Tell me you see her too," he pleaded, sounding distant and shocked.  
Amy took a step back out of the way, so that the two could see each other.  
"Yeah, her name's-"  
"Marian," Steve cut Amy off, although he wasn't saying it to her, speaking much louder now. He stepped up to the child, kneeling.  
"How...?" Amy muttered, although it wasn't heard in the panic.  
"No, no, no, you can't be the girl!" he yelled, on the verge of tears. "You can't be the girl..."  
"Steve!" Marian exclaimed in what sounded like relief, throwing her short arms around him as well as she could. After all, he was six feet tall and she was five.  
"It's going to be okay, Marian, we're going to get out of here."  
"I know." She smiled. "Amy told me you were going to save us."  
Steve looked back to Amy, who has holding onto her ponytail and watching him. She averted his eyes and smiled weakly, embarrassed. You can't really tell a kid anything unless you want it to be public information.  
He turned back to Marian and studied her. He could tell she hadn't been through much at all, and he knew the reason. It killed him, churned his stomach with guilt. She wouldn't have understood it, but whe was only there because of Steve. There's just no other reason to put a child in this shit who can hardly comprehend fear unless to fuck with somebody else.  
"I'm sorry," he whispered, more to himself than to her.  
"For what?" she questioned innocently.  
Steve shook his head. He couldn't tell a toddler she might not make it to tomorrow because he screwed up.  
"Nothing," he lied, a huge one.  
He felt tears press against the back of his eyes, and when he shut them to hug her, they fell.  
"Of course, baby," he sniffled. "I'm going to get you out of here..."  
"Come on," Amy interrupted and put a hand to his back. "We'd better get moving."  
"I'm tired," Marian whimpered. "Can't we sleep?"  
Steve's head turned, just slightly, to seek Amy's approval. When she nodded, he bit his lip and faced the child again.  
"Sure we can, sweetie," he told her in a voice that made it seem like everything was all right. It wasn't, of course.  
Marian smiled and hugged him again, for just a second, before walking to the wall and lying down. She put her fingers in her mouth and fell fast asleep in no time.

.~.

"You know her?" Amy asked Steve as she sat next to him against the wall.  
Even though it was probably best to move, they decided they could stay awake for a few hours while she slept, because neither could fall asleep, even if they wanted to, in a place like this. Marian was the only safe one, and even though she didn't realize it, she was lucky. Nothing could happen to her and her alone, because she was just a pawn. It was Steve's fault she ended up here, but if he told Amy that, he probably wouldn't like her response.  
"Yeah," he answered quietly, as not to wake the girl, and eyed her in his lap. She had rested her head there and found it comfortable, at least, more so than the floor. "She's the motel manager's granddaughter."  
_Shit, did I just confess that I live in a motel?_  
"We used to spen a lot of time together, as much as a kid and a grown man can, when I wasn't... you know, stuck _here_."  
"Oh, I-I'm sorry..." Amy whispered.  
"You really think I'm going to save you?" Steve asked solemnly without realizing he had just switched the subject out of nowhere. He didn't want to lie to her like he did Marian, and felt she could handle the truth.  
Amy sighed and paused for a reflective moment before giving him her answer.  
"At first... I thought... I was only kidding myself..." she stopped again. "But now... I believe it. I don't know if I should, but I believe it."  
Amy leaned over and rested her head on his shouldder. He just glanced over at her, sighing at himself, and that left the three in silence for the next few hours. 


End file.
